And looking out at me from their grassy green sky, two open Daisies: a perfect day's eye.

As the day wandered on I saw yellow tooth-of-lion dent-de-lion Dandelions sending off their seeds.

And I waved off the what-o'clocks as a kiss on the breeze.

Everywhere I went on this wild-flower day, there grew lush confederations of green stingers, which I gathered in gloved hands for tea.

We infused it in a teapot for keeping away the summer sneezing, and we cooked it as greens in our dinner, sharing in an old tradition of using nettles in food.

They are full of iron and delicious in soups too. Nettle tales and lore abound, but I shall share just one here: A New Forest Gypsy in 1952 was recorded as using nettles as a contraceptive. The plant had to be laid inside the man's socks as a sole for 24 hours before his dalliance with his lady!

Tender-handed touch-a-nettleIt'll sting you for your pains

Grasp it like a man of mettle

And it soft as silk remains

Now as I sit here writing, I see that some of these spring flowers have wandered into my spring Crow painting for Melanie.

And there's our growing house... parked by a patch of nettles. Tui is building a roof-rack for bikes and other things (including sitting on summer nights), and a foresty ladder to get up there! Now as he climbs he has to dodge bees, because they too have decided that a house on wheels is the best of all places to live.

And two cuckoos in the trees are cuckoo-echoing, like children singing a round as the shadows get long. And I am off to sit in the evening...

51 comments:

What gorgeous photos, thank you for sharing them! Your nettle stir-fry looks delicious! I love nettles, I look forward to gathering them every Spring! For teas, soups, or even steamed with butter...I love the taste of their deep green goodness!Thanks for the lovely post!Hugs!

Excellent post! I'll be coming back to read this one again, I think. Oddly timely, too - a package of flower and grasses identification books arrived for me today. But I may just add the Dictionary of Plant Lore to my library now, as well :)

Rima, I so look forward to reading your every post! You live a wonderful life, and the way you describe it, a magical gift. We take too much for granted on this small planet of ours, and your photos of wild flowers reminds me to keep note on my own bit of earth. In my garden, I don't spray anything, and only use environment friendly means of tending my garden ... what kills one little pest also kills by best friends and helpers. We earth tenders (and that's all of us really) must remember this. Thank you for this perfect post! BTW, the nettle dinner looks scrumptious!

What a lovely walk - thankyou for sharing it with us. We used to call stitchwort 'Bachelors' Buttons' when I was a child and I think bluebells are the most wonderful blue. Your nettle stirfry looked delicious and I love the crow painting you did for Melanie. I hope you have recovered from your painting marathon and that the weather warms up a bit so you can enjoy some balmy evenings. I can't remember the last time I heard a cuckoo - why do I love to hear them, when I know what nasty habits they have?

Lovely! I miss wildflowers...all I've seen here in Idaho so far are dandelions (which I love) and what I think are pinks. But I know there are flowers hiding in spots...perhaps just not yet...there's still snow in the tippy tops of the mountains...will have to find their hidey spots! Nettles would do us a treat right now, I think my whole family could use some spring tonic :-)

Each night before I shuffle off to bed I find myself looking to your hermitage and the adventures, small and precious like mine, that you have had each day.I spent the day in my wee garden looking for old friends popping up to tell me that they have made it through a long winter. I write you from the North Shore of Lake Superior in Canada.(About the exact middle of the country.) I want you to know that your great adventure is very generous of you to share. I once lived out of a backpack and then came the marriage,28 yrs and then 3 wonderful souls. My wee birds, of which 2 have flown to make nests of their own.I was delighted with your walk today. There is no green here yet. Willow and dogwood are ready for cutting for baskets but joy a green thumb of rubarb poked up today so fresh and green. I had to give it a proper hello.Yours Janet

I love all these wonderful wild flowers and marvel that they still get a chance to grow everywhere. I'm not great at remembering the names of them but you've inspired me to try! I like nettle tea but have never eaten it as a vegetable...yet :)

Hia Rima thanks for completing the painting while you were so busy. I hope you got a lot of sales from the exhibition. He does look beautiful and busy- so apt for the time of year. I think it is a shme that speedwell in such a beautiful blue is considered a weed. I sent a few photos from our weekend jaunt. You'd love the bluebell wood by Nuneham Courtney.

What a beautiful post! :)Our native wild flowers are so delicate and pretty.And isn't all the folklore around them wonderful.I try to encourage wild plants into my garden and leave lots alone, including cow parsley, and herb robert I'm desperate to have some ribes/wild garlic, and wood anenomes.

Splendid post celebrating the most beautiful time of the year here in Britain.I too am delighting in the bluebells, campion, cow parsley and so many others that fill the hedgerows here in Cornwall.Nettles ( live - not dead ) for tea.

From The Ledge in the Woods I appreciate the common thread we snatch at ... the flowers are opening here too, in the Olympic high mountains and the pollens have calmed enough for me to take my panther of a kit on trail therapy again.

Your growing wheelie home must be inherit to the Genes of Wheeldom for we too find additions necessary to embrace the living to its full.

10 feet is a very wee home, so the fairy gypsy clan must give us lessons every day.

Nice to see you on the page, nice to be able to get to the page (smile)

I love seeing all the wild flowers coming through right now - what a joy to discover your blog Rima, thank you for finding me and leaving a comment on mine:) I hope to visit again often, best wishes Cathy

Goosegrass! Thanks for naming this plant for me. We have it in Oregon, too. I'll bet it sticks to the pant legs or skirt and gives away lovers with that clue! Am I guessing correctly? So glad to see someone likes nettles! Not me, but then we've never cooked them, either. - Jeanne

As a Herbalist in New Zealand we still use quite a few of the plants that you photographed each day in dispensaries. Chickweed, Cleavers, Nettle, Dandelion, White-dead-nettle and Ground Ivy are such gifts. To see them on the road side, in the fields, growing wild is such a wonderful blessing from the earth.

About Me

Rima Staines is an artist using paint, wood, word, music, animation, clock-making, puppetry & story to attempt to build a gate through the hedge that grows along the boundary between this world & that. Her gate-building has been a lifelong pursuit, & she hopes to have perhaps propped aside even one spiked loop of bramble (leaving a chink just big enough for a mud-kneeling, trusting eye to glimpse the beauty there beyond), before she goes through herself.

Always stubborn about living the things that make her heart sing, Rima’s houses have a tendency to be wheeled. She currently dwells in an old cottage on top of a hill on the edge of Dartmoor with her beloved, Tom, & their big-hearted, ice-eyed lurcher, Macha.

Rima’s inspirations include the world & language of folktale; faces of people who pass her on the street; folk music & art of Old Europe & beyond; peasant & nomadic living; magics of every feather; wilderness & plant-lore; the margins of thought, experience, community & spirituality; & the beauty in otherness.

Crumbs fall from Rima’s threadbare coat pockets as she travels, & can be found collected here, where you may join the caravan.